The issues

The local character of our landscapes is under great threat, and a growing blandness and placelessness is spreading over our countryside. Year by year, England's landscape is 'dulling down' – becoming less and less varied, more and more the same. We're ending up with 'anywhere places'.

Why this is happening
The main causes of this placelessness are the pursuit of economies of scale – leading to increasingly uniform and characterless development – and the fact that the costs of transporting things are becoming cheaper and cheaper in relation to the costs of production. Companies strive to sell to a larger and larger market and get their brands recognised over a wider and wider area. Agriculture shifts to larger farms, larger fields, bigger buildings. Building materials come from the cheapest source, and that is no longer likely to be local stone and clay and wood.

So we get new houses, farm buildings and other types of development that contribute nothing to the strength of local landscape character. The products sold in supermarkets and shops could come from anywhere. Field boundaries and road verges all become more and more alike. Things like road signs, pavements and public buildings become more standardised across the country.

By letting the diversity of our countryside waste away, we are losing a priceless national asset.

What we mean by 'landscape character'
Landscape character is what makes one place different from another. It is an important aspect of the beauty of the English countryside. Like the character of a person, it is formed from a unique combination of features that have evolved over time. This evolution of landscape character is a complex, subtle process.

The diversity of English landscapes springs from differences in the underlying rocks and soil, from variations in climate and from thousands of years of history in which people have developed different ways of using the land's resources, different customs and different ways of doing, saying and thinking about things.

Why it's worth celebrating and protecting
Our accents and dialects, townscapes, trades, cultural traditions and festivals as well as the fabric of the countryside make up the varied landscapes of England. It's not for sentimental reasons that we should campaign to protect this diversity. It has great value – environmental, social, historical, cultural and economic value – because fewer people will want to live, work in or visit a homogenised, undifferentiated English countryside.